Working Together Made Easy

Working with clients across great distances, Steve Bridges needed a better way to exchange information and collaborate on projects. E-mailing large documents wasn't efficient. Inboxes got filled up or, worse, documents got overlooked. To remedy his situation, Bridges, IT manager for advertising firm La Agencia de Orci, decided to employ an extranet.

By using an extranet, his company has been able to exchange large files with clients across the country easily. A password and login protection ensures clients only see information meant for them, and the firm, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, now can offer clients another level of communication. "For us, clients appreciated how simple it made uploading," Bridges says, "but for another company, an extranet could be so much more."

Extranets, intranets, wikis, Web meeting software, they are all part of a field of tools that have made it easier for businesses to share information and collaborate on projects. Gone are the days where e-mail attachments ruled our communications. Savvy business owners can now leverage Internet technologies to inform employees, work with clients, and even conduct meetings in more efficient and productive ways.

The Extras of Extranets

In Bridges' case, an extranet was a perfect solution for his firm's communication needs. By definition, an extranet is a penetrable form of a company's intranet, accessible by "outsiders": customers, clients, vendors, suppliers, even other businesses. Utilizing individual, authorized passcodes and IDs, these outsiders can access information specific to doing business with your company. An extranet's functions can be individualized to your team, which can have as much to do with your wallet as it does with your needs.

"Our extranet was designed for us, by us," says Keith Gerson, vice president of market and development for Salt Lake City-based Alphagraphics, a company that helps customers communicate more effectively through visual communications. "One advantage of our extranet is for our international licensees, who don't speak English," he says. "We gave them administrative capabilities while using our extranet system, so they can determine what content they want to expose their franchisees to."

Extranets can be extremely useful for disparate teams that need access to similar information. In the case of franchisees, it could be that they need access to various agreements, advertising assets, and other materials critical to running their franchises successfully. For team members who are offsite, the extranet can offer a powerful way to collaborate on projects by allowing them to access documents, presentations, contracts, and other materials important to completing a given project.

Dan Martin, president of San Diego-based IFX, says his company develops extranets and hosts the systems for clients, so companies can avoid "reinventing the wheel" and purchasing all the hardware needed for necessary security. "An extranet to me could be as simple as a bulletin board to put franchisees and users together in one time and one place," he says. "This can be $500 or free on sites like extranets.com. However, many companies may need something more than a one-size-fits-all mentality."

Martin says the power of extranets was never more apparent than with nutrition client GNC. "We took everything, including sales reporting and training, and consolidated it into one extranet, bringing in their vendors as well," he says. "This reduced costs and confusion for their international operations and also made it easier for those with only one or two operations."

For a $5,000-$10,000 budget, Martin says your extranet should be able to have a centralized help desk feature, a way of providing answers through a help directory and support hotline. "You also need to have accountability, a place to track users of the system so the owner of the system always has a record. Martin says some of the hottest extranet trends are online video streaming for training purposes, where you can take a course online, study documents, and have a test come up at the end. "This can result sometimes in actual certification, reducing on-site training or retraining of the customer."